The VERY best FREE messaging replacement for the stock app on the galaxy S4. SMS is fast, and group chat MMS works perfectly as well. I am on Sprint (which supports MMS over WiFi) and Textra is the ONLY third-party messaging app that works with MMS on WiFi!!!!!! Plus it's FREE, no ads. BUT you MUST uninstall other SMS apps first, as they can interfere with Textra. After I did that it was PERFECT.

NICE! Now works on KitKat - no more hangouts for me! they added Font Size too, nice.

★★★★★ Chase in January 2014

Simple. Beautiful. Fast. Even the dev's know their app is just that good plus it's free. Bar none, this is the best SMS/MMS replacement app I've ever used. As soon as I launched it the first time, I fell in love. Upon launch, It set's up all the technical stuff automatically in mere seconds. And boy, the speed doesn't stop there. I have about 60,000 texts. With my stock app, I'd have to sit there and wait forever for various hiccups and loading and blah blah blah... I've tried every other SMS replacement app I could find. Textra is the only one that handles all of them without skipping a beat. It also lets you customize settings for each contact. Bubble color, icon color, notification sound, vibrate pattern, LED color... everything I want. And it just works. I don't have to fight the app. The only issue I had was getting my MMS messages to work, but I emailed the dev's, and within TEN MINUTES they responded. Within one night, we had about 18 or so emails back and forth, and by the end of it, they had pushed out a new version of the app (1.27) and my issue was magically fixed! I have never experienced such great support for an app before. I was blown away. I look forward to all the love and care this app will receive! Do yourself a favor and get Textra now!

★★★★★ Andrew in January 2014

Excellent free alternative to stock messaging. The program just works. You can set notifications, bubble colors and even delivery reports *per contact*. It's great with Google Keyboard, love it. Emoji's work perfectly with iPhone friends as does the group messaging. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

★★★★★ Christian in January 2014

This app is smooth and does the important functional things perfectly. It's not bloated like Go SMS and Handcent. Works great with iPhone friends for group messaging and emoji's very NICE! Also splits messages for CDMA networks as well. The timestamp feature per bubble (drag left) is SOOO slick. Great work! Good for those with limited eyesight too, as you can make the font size much bigger.

Google Play Rate

What's New

* NEW: Long hold on the audio icon (in + panel) to quickly record a voice message. Nice and simple.

* Improved the look of the contact pics (phone favs) displayed when composing a new message.